The End

1815. december 8.

Born

1830

The family moves to Berlin

The Menzels moved from Breslau to Berlin, the city where the artist would spend most of his life.

1833

His father dies; Adolph becomes the breadwinner

On his father's death the young Menzel became the family's breadwinner and took any work going, drawing dinner menus and invitation cards; by other accounts his father died in 1832, when the son took over the lithographic business.

1833

The album “An Artist's Life” brings first renown

Menzel first became known for a notebook of pen drawings, “An Artist's Life” (by other accounts an album illustrating a poem by Goethe, published by Louis Friedrich Sachse). He attended the Berlin Academy of Art for only six months and was otherwise almost entirely self-taught.

1839–1842

400 drawings for the “History of Frederick the Great”

For Franz Kugler's book Menzel produced 400 drawings, largely introducing the technique of wood engraving to Germany; with the Frederick books that followed, they made him one of the first, if not the first, illustrator of his day.

1840s

Begins painting from life

A whole series of landscapes and portraits painted from life appeared; they would first be shown only at the 1906 exhibition at the National Gallery in Berlin, and they sharply changed the accepted view of his art.